Tag: flow meter

The primary business benefits of an efficient air compressor system are reduced operational costs, reduced maintenance and increased up-time. With that being said, is your compressed air system costing you more than you think it should? Are you having failures, pressure drops, inadequate volume and/or pressure? You might think from these issues that your system has seen better days and is ready to be replaced. However, it is possible that your existing tried and true compressor system has more life left in it than you think and with a few simple steps you could have it performing like a champ again!

It is estimated that typically plants can waste up to 30 percent of their generated compressed air and that cost is substantial. Considering the average cost to generate compressed air is .25 cents per 1000 SCFM, that translates into .075 cents for every .25 cents spent! Considering that energy costs have doubled in the last five years, it couldn’t be more timely to make your air compressor system more efficient.

So just where is all this waste occurring? The largest source of compressed air energy waste is from unused or leaked compressed air and that is followed by line pressure drops, over pressurization and inadequate maintenance of the compressor.

So how can you identify this issues in your system?

1). Finding leaks can be accomplished by several methods such as soapy water applied to a suspected joint or connection or the EXAIR Ultrasonic Leak Detector. It is a high quality instrument that can locate costly leaks in your compressed air system. When a leak is present and audible tone can be heard in the supplied headphones and the LED display will light. This testing can be done up to 20′ away so need to get on a ladder!

2). Pressure drop is caused by is caused by the friction of the compressed air flowing against the inside of the pipe and through valves, tees, elbows and other components that make up a complete compressed air piping system. If the piping system is to small, the flow (volume) will not be sufficient and the devices will not operate properly. The volumetric demand would need to be added up to determine if the piping is of sufficient diameter to flow the required volume. EXAIR’sDigital Flow Meter is an easy way to monitor compressed air consumption and waste. The digital display shows the exact amount of compressed air being used, making it easy to identify piping that may be undersized. Installing one on every major leg of your air distribution system to constantly monitor and benchmark compressed air usage is a fast and efficient way to see what your volume through that distribution leg is.

3). Over pressurization is also an issue, as the pressure is raised to account for high demand periods, system leaks and pressure drops. Unfortunately operating at higher pressures can require as much as 25 percent more compressor capacity than needed, generating wasted air which is called artificial demand.

You can reduce the leakage rate by running the compressor at lower pressures. If you’re short on air, don’t turn up the pressure. Run your compressor at no higher pressure than what you process requires. To relieve peak demands on your system consider the EXAIR Receiver Tank. It store’s compressed air during low usage times and releases it when the demand is increased without working your air compressor system harder.

4). Finally, a preventative maintenance (PM) program will need to be implemented to keep the air compressor system running properly. Two items that are often neglected are the drive belts and filters. Loose belts can reduce compressor efficiency and dirty filters allow dirt to get through the system and cause pressure drops. EXAIR has replacement elements for our line of filter separators to keep you air clean and line pressure down.

By increasing your awareness of the health of your air compressor system and implementing a PM program you can significantly reduce your costs from wasted energy and avoid costly down time from an out of service air compressor.

If you would like to discuss improving your compressed air efficiency or any of EXAIR’s engineered solutions, I would enjoy hearing from you…give me a call.

EXAIR’s Digital Flow Meter offers an easy way to measure, monitor and record compressed air consumption. The Digital display shows the current amount of compressed air flow, allowing for tracking to identify costly leaks and/or inefficient air users.

How exactly does the Digital Flow Meter work? The unit falls under the category of Thermal Mass or Thermal Dispersion type flow meters. Below shows the backside of a unit.

Thermal mass flow meters have the advantage of using a simple method of measuring flow without causing a significant pressure drop. The EXAIR units have (2) probes that are inserted through the pipe wall and into the air flow. Each of the probes has a resistance temperature detector (RTD.) One of the probes measures the temperature of the air flow. The other probe is heated to maintain a preset temperature difference from the temperature measured by the first probe. The faster the air flow, the more heat that is required to keep the second probe at the prescribed temperature. From Heat Transfer principles, the heat energy input required to maintain the preset temperature is based on the mass velocity of the air. Using basic physical properties for compressed air, the volumetric rate can be determined (SCFM), and displayed.

It is important to note that the compressed air should be filtered to remove oils, and dried to remove water, as these liquids have different physical properties from air, and will cause erroneous readings.

If you have any questions about the Digital Flow Meter or any of the EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air® Products, feel free to contact EXAIR and myself or one of our Application Engineers can help you determine the best solution.

“To measure is to know – if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” -Lord Kelvin, mathematical physicist, engineer,and pioneer in the field of thermodynamics.

This is true of most anything. If you want to lose weight, you’re going to need a good scale. If you want to improve your time in the 100 yard dash, you’re going to need a good stopwatch. And if you want to decrease compressed air consumption, you’ll need a good flowmeter. In fact, this is the first of six steps that we can use to help you optimize your compressed air system.

Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System

There are various methods of measuring fluid flow, but the most popular for compressed air is thermal mass air flow. This has the distinct advantage of accurate and instantaneous measurement of MASS flow rate…which is important, because measuring VOLUMETRIC flow rate would need to be corrected for pressure in order to determine the true compressed air consumption. My colleague John Ball explains this in detail in a most excellent blog on Actual (volume) Vs. Standard (mass) Flows.

So, now we know how to measure the mass flow rate. Now, what do we do with it? Well, as in the weight loss and sprint time improvements mentioned earlier, you have to know what kind of shape you’re in right now to know how far you are from where you want to be. Stepping on a scale, timing your run, or measuring your plant’s air flow right now is your “before” data, which represents Step One. The next Five Steps are how you get to where you want to be (for compressed air optimization, that is – there may be a different amount of steps towards your fitness/athletic goals.) So, compressed air-wise, EXAIR offers the following solutions for Step One:

Digital Flowmeter with wireless capability. This is our latest offering, and it doesn’t get any simpler than this. Imagine having a flowmeter installed in your compressed air system, and having its readings continually supplied to your computer. You can record, analyze, manipulate, and share the data with ease.

Digital Flowmeter with USB Data Logger. We’ve been offering these, with great success, for almost seven years now. The Data Logger plugs into the Digital Flowmeter and, depending on how you set it up, records the flow rate from once a second (for about nine hours of data) up to once every 12 hours (for over two years worth.) Pull it from your Digital Flowmeter whenever you want to download the data to your computer, where you can view & save it in the software we supply, or export it directly into Microsoft Excel.

From the Digital Flowmeter, to your computer, to your screen, the USB Data Logger shows how much air you’re using…and when you’re using it!

Summing Remote Display. This connects directly to the Digital Flowmeter and can be installed up to 50 feet away. At the push of a button, you can change the reading from actual current air consumption to usage for the last 24 hours, or total cumulative usage. It’s powered directly from the Digital Flowmeter, so you don’t even need an electrical outlet nearby.

Monitor compressed air consumption from a convenient location, as well as last 24 hours usage and cumulative usage.

Digital Flowmeter. As a stand-alone product, it’ll show you actual current air consumption, and the display can also be manipulated to show daily or cumulative usage. It has milliamp & pulse outputs, as well as a Serial Communication option, if you can work with any of those to get your data where you want it.

With any of the above options, or stand-alone, EXAIR’s Digital Flowmeter is your best option for Step One to optimize your compressed air system.

Stay tuned for more information on the other five steps. If you just can’t wait, though, you can always give me a call. I can talk about compressed air efficiency all day long, and sometimes, I do!

EXAIR offers the model 9104 Digital Sound Level Meter. It is an easy to use instrument for measuring and monitoring the sound level pressures in and around equipment and other manufacturing processes.

Sound meters convert the movement of a thin membrane due to the pressure waves of sound into an electric signal that is processed and turned into a readable output, typically in dBA. The dBA scale is the weighted scale that most closely matches the human ear in terms of the sounds and frequencies that can be detected.

To protect workers in the workplace from suffering hearing loss OSHA has set limits to the time of exposure based on the sound level. The information in the OSHA Standard 29 CFR – 1910.95(a) is summarized below.

The Digital Sound Meter can be used to monitor and measure sound levels of manufacturing processed such as blowoffs for cooling or drying. Many blowoffs, especially open or drilled pipes are very inefficient and can be identified as a source of excessive noise, outside the OSHA exposure ranges. Once the noise violators are identified, a review can be done and the implementation of engineered solutions such as Super air Nozzles or Super Air Knives can be investigated. Keeping harmful noise levels in check benefits everyone involved.

The EXAIR Digital Sound Level Meter is an accurate and responsive instrument that measures the decibel level of the sound and displays the result on the large optionally back-lit LCD display. There is an “F/S” option to provide measurement in either ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ modes for stable or quickly varying noises. The ‘Max Hold’ function will capture and hold the maximum sound level, and update if a louder sound occurs.

Certification of accuracy and calibration traceable to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) is included.

There is an informative Video Blog, presented by @EXAIR_LE that can be found here.

If you have questions about the Digital Sound Level Meter, or would like to talk about any of the quiet EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air® Products, feel free to contact EXAIR and myself or one of our Application Engineers can help you determine the best solution.

For over 34 years, EXAIR has been the industry leader in providing Intelligent Compressed Air Products to the industrial marketplace. While much of our focus is to ensure our products are engineered to provide optimal performance, we are also dedicated to manufacturing products that meet a wide range of standards and directives to promote safety in relation to plant personnel.

For instance, all of our compressed air operated products meet or exceed OSHA Standards 29 CFR 1910.242(b), requiring that the outlet pressure of an open pipe, nozzle, air gun, etc., when used for cleaning purposes, must remain below 30 PSI when dead-ended against the skin, as well as Standard 29 CFR 1910.95(a) as a way to protect workers from job related injuries related to dangerous sound levels of 90 dBA and higher.

Many of our products are also CE Compliant, meeting the mandatory requirements for products intended to be sold in the European Economic Area or “EEA”. For example our Electronic Flow Control and Electronic Temperature Control (ETC) meet the EU (European Union) Low Voltage Directive 2006/95/EC.

EXAIR electrically powered devices, like our Static Eliminators and Digital Flowmeters for example, comply with the “Restriction of Hazardous Substances” or RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU, including the amendment outlined in the European Commission decision L 214/65.

We are also committed to providing material that supports the conflict mineral free rule to help aid in the relief of illegal trade of exotic materials, like tungsten, gold, tin and tantalum in the DRC region. Using the CMRT 4.20 template, we document our supply resources to ensure we provide conflict free products, as outlined in Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Lastly, the European Union introduced the REACH program – Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals, as a method to register chemical substances being imported into the EU to protect people and the environment, per Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 Title I, Article 3. Also noted in the program, Title II, Article 7, they state that any product with a substance intended to be released under normal operating conditions, must be registered for quantities totaling more than 1 metric ton per year. Since EXAIR products do not intentionally release or contain any such substances, registration to meet the program is not required.

If you have any questions about any of these Standards or Directives or about which EXAIR products comply, please feel free to contact an application engineer for assistance. We’d be happy to help!

Well, a lot, actually…if that name is EXAIR. I wrote a blog just last week about how a set of Super Air Knives solved a MAJOR problem with a brand new aluminum sawing application – the company got those Super Air Knives on the recommendation of the Maintenance Supervisor, who had used them, with great success, at a previous company.

Even more recently, I had the pleasure of helping a caller from an engineering firm that specifies a wide range of our products for use in their OEM machinery:

Turns out, they use a good amount of compressed air in their manufacturing facility and (did I mention they’re an engineering firm?) they’re interested in implementing a facilities resource management program. For one part of this, they want to know how much compressed air they’re using, when they’re using it, and what they’re using it for. And when presented with a question about compressed air, they thought about EXAIR…and wanted to know more about the Digital Flowmeter.

EXAIR’s Digital Flowmeter w/ USB Data Logger

We discussed everything from theory of operation, to best practices for installation (location, position, etc.,) to accuracy, to getting the flow data…and we’ve got a few options for that:

*The Digital Flowmeter itself can output a 4-20mA signal, or there’s an optional RS-485 output board available.
*The USB Data Logger connects directly to the Digital Flowmeter and records flow rate data – about 9 hours’ worth if measured once a second; 2 years’ worth if measured every 12 hours. When removed from the Digital Flowmeter and plugged into your computer, you can use its software, or Microsoft Excel, to view & analyze the data.
*The Summing Remote Display offers instant indication of current flow rate, previous 24 hours’ air consumption, and cumulative total usage, all at the push of a button.

EXAIR’s Summing Remote Display – see current flow rate, previous 24 hours’ consumption, or total cumulative usage, at the push of a button!

The latter turned out to be the best fit for my caller – the main supply header runs right past his office, and, if he can sell his facilities folks on it, he can install the Summing Remote Display on the wall, right next to his desk. Easy as that.

EXAIR’s Intelligent Compressed Air Products have made a name for themselves in many places like this. Here at the factory, we’re all dedicated to spreading, and reinforcing, that reputation for excellence. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

And this was never more true than in a conversation I had with the facilities engineer at a manufacturing plant recently. Their business has grown so much over the past few years to cause a move into a larger building. They took this opportunity to install some engineered compressed air products, and, with the brand-new building, they also got brand-new compressed air piping, which the contractor has just completed post-installation testing on, and it’s leak free. Good news!

They noticed, however, that the run time hours on their air compressors (which were in fine shape, and simply moved from the old facility) hadn’t appreciably decreased. The engineer was looking for another way to measure…and quantify…their compressed air usage, and was interested in our Digital Flowmeters.

Available for a wide range of SCH40 Iron or Type “L” Copper, EXAIR Digital Flowmeters are quick to install and easy to operate.

Of primary concern during our conversation was, how could they track their usage? Would someone have to check the Digital Flowmeter reading periodically? What about intermittent uses? They have a TON of hand-held air guns throughout the plant…what if they read the meter when only a few were in use? Or if they ALL were in use?

There are a couple of options for that…our Digital Flowmeters are all supplied with both 4-20mA and RS-485 Serial connections, which are easily outputted to an appropriate device. You can run this right to your computer, and there are a variety of programs that will allow you to collect and manage this data.

They intend to install this Digital Flowmeter in the compressor room, though…and even though it’s well within the maximum distance for RS-485 serial – it’s good for distances up to 4,000 feet (1,200 meters,) it would be impractical to run a cable through the building.

Enter the USB Datalogger: this is going to allow them to “take a snapshot” of their usage, at specified intervals…in this case, every 10 seconds, which means the USB Datalogger will collect and store data for over three days. It has its own proprietary software, which you’ll use to set the frequency of readings, choose units & graph scale, high/low alarm points (if desired) and even when you want to start recording. This would, for example, let you record data on the mid-shift, without staying at work until midnight to start recording. VERY convenient, as far as I’m concerned.

Once it’s installed and running, I hope to work with them on the next steps towards optimizing their compressed air system…but we’re off to a good start!

Looking to “go green?” We can help.

If you want to talk about getting the most out of your compressed air system, give us a call. We’re here to help.